Laura Gibbs brought the new Tar Heel reader website to our attention a couple of weeks ago: The idea is to write books for beginning readers, of all ages.Some of the reading material, therefore, is suitable for teenagers.

Laura wrote the first fully illustrated latin story on the site, just on a week ago. A number of other Latin teachers have now contributed, and there are already 30 titles available to read.http://tarheelreader.org/?s=latin

If you are just beginning, or even if you are more experienced, this site may interest you.

I run http://latinum.org.uk which provides the Adler Audio Latin Course, other audio materials, and additional free materials on YouTube.

Cool resource. If I could get my classroom wired up, I would use this. I currently use Taurus Rex and Octavus Octupus in class and I like them. They have quizzes at the end (the only way to get a student's attention). I wish the Tar Heel books did the same. I guess I could create quizzes separately.

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. ~Swift

The books I mentioned are not on the Tarheel site. I bought them from Balchazzy-Carducci. The quizzes contain questions relating to comprehension and vocabulary. They are all Multiple Choice.

In Octavus Octapus, he is cold and he desires socks. The question might be the following:

Octavus desiderat soccos quod est ___________.

A) siccus B) frigidus C) jejunus

You do not have to use them for quizzes. You can do anything you want with them. I use them for small quizzes because my students enjoy the easy 10 points. I only have four story books. I have partly created four more. I hope to have 20-30 done for next year so that I can do one a week. Nice fun break from industrious farmers and lazy slaves.

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. ~Swift

metrodorus wrote:Laura Gibbs brought the new Tar Heel reader website to our attention a couple of weeks ago: The idea is to write books for beginning readers, of all ages.Some of the reading material, therefore, is suitable for teenagers.

Laura wrote the first fully illustrated latin story on the site, just on a week ago. A number of other Latin teachers have now contributed, and there are already 30 titles available to read.http://tarheelreader.org/?s=latin

If you are just beginning, or even if you are more experienced, this site may interest you.

Hi,Pleased you're enthusiastic.I personally think this tar heel site has the potential to be the most important thing to happen in beginning Latin education in a generation.

We have NEVER had a good selection of proper beginning readers in Latin. Not this century, not in the last, and nor in the previous 20 ..... if the Romans had such, they have not come down to us.

Amazingly, there are now over 100 titles. They include things like readers designed to teach tricky subjects like multiplication, and Laura Gibb's amazing collection of simplified Aesop. More books appear by the week.

Latin is the only foreign language on tar heel with a proper review system - reviewed books get a gold shield.

Laura Gibbs recently made an observation about the strange way declensions are taught in Latin textbooks, and in classrooms.

It is far more intuitive, and in accord with the way declensions are taught in modern declined languages, to teach them by case.

I decided to experiment with this with one class - the result was highly satisfactory. The outcome of this is a method I have developed, I call 'teaching with the hand', or Grammatical TPRS. This was my Eureka moment - that I could use the human hand to teach the declensions. Maybe it has been done before, but I've never seen such a table or image in a textbook before.

I made a tar heel reader going through the method blow by blow. It works really well. Five declensions, one per finger. Vocative on the index finger, which is what we use to point when 'addressing' something. Second declension is on this finger.Students immediately know the numbers of the declensions, because the paradigms are literally 'at their fingertips'

As a teacher, easy to get the class involved - simply hold up a finger, and state a verb that requires a certain case: then the student has to decline the paradigm verb for the finger held up:e.g. The teacher calls out Ecce! and her fourth finger: the student has to decline fructus.Video (or amo, or habeo, or some such) and the index finger, will produce dominum, or magistrum, or verbum....O! and the pointing action will produce domine, or fili, or vergili or some such response....and rapidly, the students can be challenged and tested. They can 'see' immediately that there in only a vocative case on the 'pointing finger'.

Tests are given on blank hand sheets. (Be sure to trace your hand PALM UP, as this gives the hand that the student is looking at in front of them)

In the student's workbooks, ten large hands ( 5 for singular, 5 for plurals) are traced out from a photocopied master copy, and instead of declension tables, the students have hand pages, each headed up with a verb, or, in the nominative, with 'ecce'.

I run http://latinum.org.uk which provides the Adler Audio Latin Course, other audio materials, and additional free materials on YouTube.

metrodorus wrote:Laura Gibbs recently made an observation about the strange way declensions are taught in Latin textbooks, and in classrooms.

It is far more intuitive, and in accord with the way declensions are taught in modern declined languages, to teach them by case.

Do you mean teaching all nominatives, all genitives, all datives, etc. instead of teaching entire 1st declension 2 declension etc.?

I find the hand finger thing intriguing; however, it confuses me to no end. It took me awhile to learn to tie my shoe laces, so I think this method will not work with me.

I am always impressed with the systems that teachers come up with. I taught with a woman once who used Dragon Bucks (her name was Dragon) as rewards for answering questions, doing homework, etc. This was how she figured out participation. She collected the bucks at the end of each 55 minute class. She was organized in ways I cannot even begin to imagine. This one task would suck up 10 minutes of my class time, not to mention my nights.

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. ~Swift

*** CROSS POSTED AT LATIN TEACH & Latin-best-practices: please forward to anyone you think would be interested in participating in this project - including any other English or foreign language teachers, too ***

Hi everybody, I thought I would send an update about the Tar Heel Reader project, since we have now passed the 250 reader milestone!

You can also use the search feature at Tar Heel to look for how the authors themselves have tagged their readers, such as these readers specifically designed for Oerberg's Lingua Latina - but potentially useful to any beginning students!http://tarheelreader.org/?s=oerberg

If people have questions, suggestions or requests about this project, please let me know. I've been trying to collect notes and tips at the Libelli Latini blog here:http://libellilatini.blogspot.com/Each reader has its own page at the blog where you can leave comments, notes about typos or anything that you think needs correcting, suggestions about using the reader for teaching, ec. etc.

I'm hoping that people will want to contribute new readers as the new school year gets started - Tar Heel is a fun and easy way to create materials for your students which can then benefit Latin teachers and students all over the world - for free!

Most importantly: THANKS to everybody for their contributions and help in getting this project off to such a great start this summer - and I'm looking forward to lots of Tar Heel Reader fun this fall!

Laura

I run http://latinum.org.uk which provides the Adler Audio Latin Course, other audio materials, and additional free materials on YouTube.